Our Quality and Approach

Our Mission is to make a positive difference to people and their families bydelivering personalised health and social care that helps them toachieve the things they want out of life.

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We developed a Quality Strategy to express our commitment to delivering high quality services for the people we support, and to continue to work towards achieving our mission. You can download our latest Quality Strategy by clicking on the image to the left. Our core priorities are detailed below:

Governance +

The Director of Governance and Nursing leads a team that includes expertise in nursing, governance, compliance, policy, audit and risk management.

The focus is to provide assurance of service user safety, the delivery of high quality care and measurable positive outcomes through a number of key initiatives, including the implementation of the company's Quality Strategy, the Annual Audit Plan and the Annual Internal Quality Development Reviews.

The Governance Team undertake monthly analysis across key proxy indicators of service user safety and outcomes for each service and region. This information is used to monitor and continually improve the quality of care we provide.

Quality Development Reviews +

Quality Development Reviews (QDRs) are undertaken at least annually and are key vehicles for internal assurance. QDRs comprise of unannounced visits by a team of experts, including external and service user representation. This work is supported by the Consultant Nurses, who also provide professional nursing leadership, clinical expertise and supervision. The whole team oversee and maintain a number of key processes including the development of company policies and procedures, risk registers and regulatory actions.

Our Model of Care: Personal PATHS +

We believe that we must be fully accountable to those we support, their families and those who commission services on their behalf. In order to do this, we have described what we do in a straightforward and transparent manner, based on five key principles:

Positive Behaviour Support

Appreciative Inquiry Methodology

Therapeutic Outcomes

Healthy Lifestyles

Safe Services

Many of the people we support have complex needs and behaviours. We believe that we have to make a long term commitment to providing the right support for each individual to improve their quality of life.

This does not mean that people need to remain in the same place, but rather we continue to support them in a person centred way along their care pathway and ensure that what we learn about the person and the best way to work with them, is respected, applied and built on. Importantly, our way of working supports people to be included in their own communities and promotes choice and control, the development of skills and alternative strategies for coping with challenging situations.

We are clear that our values and beliefs are the foundation on which our work is based. To maintain strong foundations, we have taken an appreciative approach to care delivery and organisational development. How we do this for individual service users is through a range of measures, including;

• Involving service users in the design, development and evaluation of our services• Using person-centred approaches in our assessment and care planning• Capturing what we like and admire about each service user, their strengths and talents, and how we can best support them• Listening to each person and their family’s hopes and dreams for the future.

A core belief of our organisation is that we are accountable for everything we do with service users, their families and those who commission on their behalf. To do this we must demonstrate good outcomes and measure them in ways that are valid and inclusive.

The tools we use place the person and their family central to the process, and enable us to support and measure change with each individual.

We know there is a solid body of evidence about the positive effects that diet and exercise can have on mental and physical wellbeing, and that people with learning disabilities and Autistic Spectrum Disorder are more likely to experience ill-health and premature death.

We want to ensure that the people we support have the best chance of living a healthy life and that we do all we can to enable this. We support service users’ wellbeing in a number of ways, including, healthy lifestyles groups, health improvement interventions, individualised activity plans, and implementation of the Health Equality Framework (HEF).

The people we support need to experience care that is safe, sound and supportive. We take this need very seriously and have developed a system that provides us tools to ensure we can monitor, improve and check our services robustly. We are clear about ‘what good care and support looks like’ and strive to deliver to expectations. You can read more about this in our Quality Strategy - click on the image on the left of the page to download.

Everyone we support has access to an independent advocate. They can ask to see them at any time and this will be arranged. All staff have access to an independent whistle blowing service for them to use if they are worried about patient safety, care and/or their wellbeing.

Personal Activities Plan +

We are proud that all service users are supported to create their own personal weekly activity programme. Each service has their own Activity Coordinator or Support Workers who work hard with service users, their families and those closest to them to find out what is important to them and to ensure that they are offered activities they enjoy.

The Activity Coordinators and Support Workers also support and encourage service users to develop their domestic, social and communication skills. Each service user has their own person-centred activity timetable in a format they choose. Service users have a lot of activities to choose from, both within the service, and in the surrounding area. Many of our services have sensory rooms, as well as spaces dedicated to arts and crafts. Our care homes and hospitals also have training kitchens to provide independent living skills, helping people prepare for moving on to supported living. External activities can be accessed via various social inclusion activities within the local area, and individuals are supported to utilise all that is on offer.

Service User Involvement +

We encourage people to say how they feel about all aspects of the service they receive and we give them the tools and support to do this. This includes their views about how we deliver support to them, their care plans and the activities they want to do.

At each service, we support people to be part of their local and regional service user forum, where they can tell us what matters to them. This ensures service users’ voices are heard, and are also a great way for individuals to meet new people from other services and exchange ideas.

A number of service users have been trained as Experts by Experience. Their role is part of the Quality Development Review Team who inspect services to ensure the quality of care remains high.

We also train and support people to be a valued member of the recruitment and interview process in many of our services.

Feedback from the people we support is vital to making sure we are doing things well, and we have questionnaires to support this feedback. Adapted questionnaires are used for people who need support in communication and that way we can be sure all voices are heard and acted upon. All feedback is collated and fed back to the board members.

Staff Support +

Service users have full access to specialist clinical and therapeutic support to enable us to deliver creative, flexible and effective responses to meet each individual need. Our multi-professional team includes Nurses, Support Workers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists and Activity Coordinators.

We are committed to the learning and development of our staff as stated in our Quality Strategy. We have also created a Training and Development Strategy that reflects the importance of increasing people’s confidence, knowledge and expertise.

Family Matters +

We know that the people we support are part of a wider circle of family, friends and networks that are important to them and therefore important to us. We work in partnership with them to ensure we provide the right service for their relative, and also to support them in their own right as a family carer. For more information about how we support Family Carers, click here to view our Family and Carer section.